Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans his Department has to increase the value of the Strategic Priorities Grant.

​The Strategic Priorities Grant is funding supplied by the government on an annual basis to support higher education providers’ ongoing teaching and other related activities. In the 2021/22 financial year the Strategic Priorities Grant was worth £1.4 billion and we asked the Office for Students (OfS), which administers the grant, to prioritise funding towards high-cost, high-value subjects that support the NHS and wider healthcare policy, high-cost science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) subjects and/or specific labour market needs. As a result, the total funding for high-cost subjects, such as medicine, engineering and other high-cost subjects, is 12% (£81 million) higher in 2021/22 compared to 2020/21. We also increased funding for specialist providers by £10 million.

The department is working to finalise funding for the Strategic Priorities Grant for the 2022/23 financial year and we will issue guidance to the OfS in due course.